1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an energy management system, an energy management method and a unit for providing information on energy-saving recommended equipment which are capable of promoting energy conservation of equipment for home use.
2. Description of the Related Art
When you want people to save energy in their houses, it is said to be essential to heighten their awareness of energy conservation. To realize this, a number of systems have conventionally been developed which can measure their energy consumption in real time and display it to them. Particularly, with respect to electrical energy, proposals have been made for the method of measuring in real time the power consumption of electrical equipment which consumes a large amount of power, such as an air conditioner, and then displaying it to those who live there.
For example, in Patent Document 1, a display portion is provided in the body of an air conditioner, so that residents can confirm the power consumption of the air conditioner in real time. In addition, Patent Document 2 discloses that a sensor is provided in a master watt-hour meter, and a separately-provided display portion displays a power consumption or its corresponding charge.
Herein, Patent Document 1 is Japanese Patent Laid-Open No.11-281122 specification, and Patent Document 2 is Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-53954 specification.
However, according to these prior arts, a display is made only of a usage situation of electrical equipment used by a person who lives in a house, or merely of how it has been used. This may prompt the person to devise how to use it for energy conservation, but it would not urge the person to replace it with a new product. Hence, no energy-saving effect cannot be expected from this. For example, in the case of equipment on the top-runner list, such as an air conditioner, a TV set, a refrigerator and a washing machine, a new product is always energy-saving equipment. Thus, if you purchases it to replace the old one, you can conserve energy very much. However, it is difficult for a person who lives in a house to judge when to buy a new product. This is mainly because a catalog or the like tells you how much energy-saving effect a new product has quantitatively compared with its old model, but for example, a standard value is set as hours in use or the like. This not necessarily corresponds to how a resident will actually use the new product. Therefore, the energy-saving effect itself can be separated from the effect produced according to the resident's actual usage conditions. Accordingly, the resident may feel that the energy-saving effect itself is not real, and thus, refrain from buying the new product.